A Sparkling Evening

The Frenchman’s Cellar, the wine, beer, and cheese shop affiliated with The Frenchman’s Corner in Culpeper has been doing an interesting series of tastings.  Every other Wednesday evening, they bring in a local wine maker to taste some of his or her wines and talk about their experiences with making wine in VA.  Whenever I can, I try to get to these – after all, local wine is what we do – but I definitely wanted to get to the tasting last Wednesday.  Claude Thibaut from Thibaut-Janisson Winery was going to be there.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Thibaut-Janisson, they make the sparkling wine that was served at President Obama’s now infamous state dinner with the gate crashers who have done more to hurt VA wine than the presence of the Thibaut-Janisson Blanc de Chardonnay on the menu could do to help it.  Thibaut-Janisson is a very small production winery, and I haven’t found their distribution to be the best, so I was really excited for the opportunity to both try and buy some of their wine.

Claude Thibaut was a lovely man to talk with, and he definitely made sure we had a great time talking about wine and food in both France and the US.  He brought his current three releases with him for us to try, and I was really excited since I’d only every had the flagship Blanc de Chardonnay (referred to by him as T-J) prior to this.  He also brought the Virginia Fizz and his brut rosé (all made in the methode traditionelle).

The Fizz was up first (<$25).  It’s a 100% chardonnay wine that aged for about 1.5 years and is made in a more fruit-forward, new world style.  It was definitely a fruitier, creamier, less yeasty sparkler.  This is also a slightly sweeter wine (1.5% residual sugar – the upper limit of what can still be called brut).  While I’m often a big fan of a fruit forward wine, I don’t tend to go for that in a sparkling; I generally prefer mine to be drier, crisper, and yeastier.  That said, this was a fun, everyday kind of sparkling wine that I’m looking forward to opening a bottle of on a warm evening this summer.

The flagship T-J was up next (<$30).  This is their more traditional french-style sparkling aged for 3 years (100% chardonnay).  This is definitely a crisper and yeastier wine with light hints of fruit coming through from time to time.  When I think about sparkling wine in VA, this is the one that comes to mind for me as the best the state has to offer.  For everything involved in making this wine, I think the price is quite reasonable, and it’s become my go-to sparkling.

The third wine was the surprise to me since I didn’t know Thibaut-Janisson had released a third wine: a brut rosé (<$30).  This wine has approximately 10% pinor noir in it to give it a slight hint of pink in the glass and some red berry flavors in the middle of the palate.  The chardonnay characteristics were more prominent at the front, and there was a hint of violet or lavender (still working on identifying my floral tastes) on the finish.  I enjoyed this wine, but I have very little to compare it to as I’ve had very few sparkling rosés.  Claude Thibaut recommended pairing this wine with food, so we’ll probably do that when we open this bottle.

As you may have guessed, we enjoyed all the wines and bought a bottle of each so we can enjoy them at our leisure in the months to come.  If you get the opportunity to try these wines, definitely take advantage.  He’s doing some great things with bubbles (and they apparently surprise wine makers in France in blind tastings who can’t figure out where they’re coming from since they don’t have the new world elements they’re used to from CA and Australia offerings).  FYI, there are also a few new small production offerings on the horizon, so keep on eye open for new offerings as they become available as well (and let us know about them so we can check them out as well).   I overheard him mentioning that one is a 2006 vintage sparkling, and he told me that his other upcoming release is a no dosage/no sugar wine called brut zero.  Both should be released by the end of the year (although there will be only 20 cases or so of the vintage wine – good luck finding it).

If you’ll be in the Culpeper area on a Wednesday night, consider stopping by The Frenchman’s Corner for a Winemaker Wednesday tasting from 6-8 (see the map below).  The upcoming schedule is:

• 6-23     TBA
• 7-14     Stephen Barnard (Keswick Vineyards)
• 7-28     Bill Gadino (Gadino Cellars)
• 8-11     Bernd Jung (Chester Gap Cellars)
• 8-25     Matthiew Finot (King Family Vineyards)
• 9-15     Luca Paschina (Barboursville Vineyard)
• 9-29     TBA

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The A Sparkling Evening by Swirl, Sip, Snark, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.